Call Number:

SC MS 0296

Repository:

Lehigh University Special Collections

Extent:

1 volume

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Cite as:

Date:

1843-1846 (inclusive)

Creator:

Taylor, Alexander Clark, 1825-1858 and Pense, Muriel, Mrs., 1935-

Form:

Diaries, Notebooks, and Journals (accounts)

Abstract:

A journal kept by Alexander Clark Taylor, a primary school teacher from Vineland, New Jersey, contains his recollections of antebellum life on a Virginia plantation.

Alexander Clark Taylor was born in Newark, New Jersey March 12,1825 to Alexander Miller Taylor (1800 to 1829) and Julia Clark (1799 to 1846). Julia Clark was the daughter of Jotham and Esther Clark and had a sister named Cornelia Clark. Julia married Alexander Miller Taylor in 1821. Lehigh's Special Collections also has a journal from Claudia Clark, aunt of Alexander Clark Taylor. Upon graduation in 1843 from Princeton College, now Princeton University, Alexander Clark Taylor taught school on a plantation in antebellum Virginia while awaiting admission to medical school at University of Pennsylvania. The plantation, Edgeworth (now located in West Virginia) was owned by General William Fitzhugh Gordon (1787-1858), a lawyer who came from a family who served as Continental Congress representatives. During this time with the Gordons, apparently Mr. Taylor acquired knowledge of the law for he practiced law in Cleveland, Ohio for a time in his early years. Although a graduate of medicine he never practiced to a great extent but engaged in the drug business in Davenport, Iowa. He married Clara Ashmead Dalzell (1836-1926) in Davenport May 17, 1859. They moved from Iowa in 1866 to Vineland, New Jersey to join members of the extended family living in Vineland and Philadelphia. They purchased a ten acre farm on Butler Avenue in Vineland. He spent 33 years in the drug business and upon retirement was succeeded in the business by a son William C. Taylor. Dr. A. C. Taylor died March 22, 1911 and is buried in Vineland. The donor of these Clark-Taylor journals is Muriel Taylor Pense, wife of Professor Alan Pense. Muriel is Dr. Alexander Clark Taylor's great-granddaughter. Muriel's father was Louis Richmond Taylor the fourth child of Dr. A. C. Taylor's third child Alexander Miller Taylor born 1865 and married to Minnie Florence Stuart in 1894. Louis Richmond Taylor (b.1902) married Ruth Muriel (Koehnke) Harkin (b. 1907). Special Collections has Muriel's aunt Jeanette Koehnke's collection of pre- and post- World War II letters.

The collection is a single faintly-lined, thread bound booklet of 24 pages. The cover is of tattered grey green heavy paper on outside but tan on inside. The title that appears on the first page is Journal & Extracts by Alex. C. Taylor. F.A.W.S. also Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Personages of Antiquity. (Begun Nov. 1843. Finished July, 1846.) Apparently, this journal was written by a young man away for the first time from home, how he passed his time with hunting, reading and writing extracts of personages of antiquity, awaiting acceptance into the medical school of University of Pennsylvania.

Items entered in chronological order.